This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Military issues

  • The Cats Away, So To Set The Tone… A Fart Story.

    Been sitting on this story (no pun intended) for a day or so.

    So here’s the news:  audible farting has been banned for some Marines downrange because it offends the Afghans.

    I know there are many things in the Afghan culture that don’t seem normal to Americans and it’s hard to spend seven months working in someone else’s back yard.  Still, the Marines I saw downrange are doing a pretty good job at trying to do the right thing around the Afghans.

    They’re not supposed to cuss because it could be misunderstood (that one goes out the window a lot). And they stay away from talking about politics, religion or girls because those topics could escalate into major disagreements (they can’t communicate anyway because of the language barrier).

    But farting?  That’s practically a sport.  Ok, it’s not soccer, but a good contest could open the door for cross-cultural exchanges, jokes and other gallows humor.

    So, for all Marines getting ready to go downwind, I mean downrange, be forewarned — you may have to hold it in… at least until you get back to your hooch where you can loudly crop dust your friends.

    Dunno just what the Jarheads in A’Stan eat, but I’m trying to relate? Should those fine groups that organize care packages for those deployed send Beano?

    It’s a cultural thing I reckon? So let us help those folks downrange deal with this before it causes an international incident.

  • I want that for my kids

    My oldest son is leaving for Navy boot camp three months from today. My second son is leaving for Marine Corps boot camp next summer after he graduates from high school. His final year started today. Also starting 12th grade today is my niece. I’ve had her since she was 12. She’s working on practice ASVABs so she can get the score she wants so she, too, can leave for the Navy.

    About this point in the conversation, people start to wonder what kind of mother I am to encourage all of my children to enlist. Didn’t I want them to go to college? Don’t I worry they’ll be harmed? Brainwashed?

    I go on: my 18 year old step son is desperate to get in. He got into some trouble when he was 13 and he can’t jump through enough hoops to get started with his future with the world’s greatest Navy. (Although, the world’s greatest Army is starting to look pretty good to him, too.) Our son-in-law is a Marine.

    You homeschooled them, sent them to private school, moved into a school district you can’t afford only to send them off to war? What about their faith? What about the cause for Christ? What about COLLEGE?

    Did I mention that I’d really like to see my brainiacsuperstudent apply for an NROTC scholarship? She plays hardcore rugby- the Naval Academy has a team. (Eye roll from said superstudent.)

    I don’t want anything to happen to my children, obviously. I can’t promise that if they die or are maimed I can stand stoic and proclaim I would have done it all the same. But from this vantage point, the service can give them things that growing up in the information age never can. These are things I’ve tried to instill, but need time to develop. Backbone. Honor. Commitment.Courage.Appreciation for hard work. The Pride that comes from finishing something you never thought you could, or completing something after you’ve failed abysmally a half dozen times.

    Nothing on this earth, not even growing up dirt poor in a house with ten siblings and a mom that should have been a drill sergeant, can instill in you that THING that makes you stand and face the tomorrows that come at you with a vengeance with a stability that you know you can take all-comers: nothing, but a little time given up in the service of your country.

    I want that for my kids.

  • Deaf man wants to be commissioned

    The Professor of Military Science of the ROTC detatchment at California State University, Northridge stepped on his dick and allowed deaf man, Keith Nolan, audit Military Science courses. Now Nolan thinks that academic experience should qualify him to be a lieutenant in the Army according to Fox News;

    Nolan became a top performer in the ROTC program’s Bravo Company at California State University at Northridge, and his instructors were so impressed they let him wear a uniform. He was distraught when he turned it back in and said goodbye to the other cadets in May. He could advance no further under the military’s current policy that requires cadets pass a hearing test to be commissioned by the Army.

    It was a stinging moment that burned in the soul of the bespectacled 29-year-old teacher, who is determined to break that barrier and achieve his lifetime dream of working in military intelligence.

    “All I really want to do is join the Army,” said Nolan, a confident, clean-cut man with a boyish face who signed to an interpreter in an interview at the university’s ROTC office. He was flanked by posters with inspirational messages urging people to join. “I want to do my duty, serve my country and experience that camaraderie, and I can’t, owed to the fact that I’m deaf.”

    Of course, it’s not hard for him to find a Democrat to help him – Henry “Nostrilitis” Waxman has told the young man that he wants to help him circumvent Army medical standards so he can join the Army.

    Nolan needed someone to sign the drill and ceremony commands so he could function in the formations. I guess no one is willing to point out to him that the Army would have to pay two people for the work one fully functioning person could do so they can provide reasonable accommodations in order for Nolan to serve.

    I guess this is somewhat related to TSO’s post the other day related to the midget who couldn’t reach the coffee machine at Starbucks. the Army takes people into the service who they think will be an asset to the mission, not someone they have to make special accommodations for and ends up costing them more money than one person is worth. I understand Nolan’s desire to become a soldier, but who is next? A blind man?

    Nolan says that the military makes accommodations for people who’ve been wounded and severely injured, but he’s overlooking the fact that the military has already trained them as whole people and has invested some money in them before they were injured. They have experience, Nolan doesn’t. He just has the desire – the Army can find a million people like that who would cost them a whole lot less to train. Nolan has proven himself in the classroom, but we all know that ROTC and commissioning is a whole heluva lot more than classroom work.

    And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Nostrilitis wants to help Nolan join the military. Waxman has no idea what it takes to be a military officer, so why would he care?

  • That retirement pay thing again

    Several of you are upset with a CBS story about the planned changes to the military retirement system. I guess they shouldn’t have started the story the way they did;

    It sounds like a pretty good deal: Retire at age 38 after 20 years of work and get a monthly pension of half your salary for the rest of your life. All you have to do is join the military.

    Yep, that’s “all you have to do”…join. You don’t have to spend months away from your family, live in the mud, climb mountains pulling a 500-pound ahkio behind you through waist deep snow, suffer in triple digit temperatures and no air conditioning in sight. Stand in real torrential downpours, holding a spike lined tree hoping you don’t get washed away. Sleep in a hammock four inches above the swamp water because you don’t like waking up with poisonous snakes in your bed. You don’t have to live for days on a few moments of sleep or forage for your food. You don’t have to arrive at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air.

    You don’t have to be responsible not only for your welfare, but the welfare of 30 other people and 7 million dollars worth of equipment, all before you’re 25 years old. Or you don’t have to move 120 one million dollar-plus vehicles and their crews from point A to point B across the plains of Europe before you’re 30 years old.

    You don’t have to look your country’s enemies in the eye and pull your trigger and then live with the attendant dreams the rest of your life. You don’t have to wake up with night sweats screaming almost every night. You don’t have to deal with the hippies spitting on you and calling you names. You don’t have to intermittently watch your children grow up.

    Your day doesn’t start at 4 in the morning and end at 6 PM on a regular duty day – on one of your short days. And it doesn’t include those days when you get called at 2 AM for an alert and you don’t come home for a month or six.

    And, oh, you don’t have to share half of your pension with that cheatin’ wife who couldn’t wait for you to come home from doing your duty before she divorced you.

    All you have to do is join the military and your future is secured with that anemic pension that presidents and Congress can snatch away from you a portion at a time.

    By the way, CBS, the military pension hasn’t been “half your salary” since Jimmy Carter made it 40% for folks who joined after 1977. Do your research.

  • 71st Anniversary National Airborne Day

    COB6

    That’s COB6 giving you the six minute warning above.

    National Airborne Day is set on the day of the first parachute jump conducted by the Army’s Parachute Test Platoon on August 16th, 1940.

    On the morning of 16 August 1940 the jump began. After the C-33 leveled off at 1500 feet and flew over the jump field, Lt. Ryder was in the door ready to jump. Warrant Officer Wilson knelt in the door waiting to pass the Go Point. When this was reached, he slapped Lt. Ryder on the leg and the first jump was made. Now Number One moved into position. Slap! “Go! Jump!”

    Still no movement.

    It was too late now to jump on this pass. Mr. Wilson motioned Number One to go back to his seat. As the plane circled Mr. Wilson talked to Number One. Number One wanted another chance. Okay, this time we’ll do it. Back into the jumping position and once again, slap!

    Sadly, no movement. Number One returned to his seat.

    Private William N. “Red” King moved into the jumping position in the door. Slap! Out into American military immortality leaped Red King… the first enlisted man of the test platoon to jump out of an airplane. Number One was transferred to another post and anonymity. Now there were forty-seven. Was Number One a coward? I don’t think many experienced jumpers would say so. There are things some men cannot do at a given time. Possibly another time would have been fine. He wanted to. He intended to. He just could not… at least that morning.

    The first US airborne operation was in support of Operation Torch, November 1942, in North Africa when 531 members of the 2nd Battalion 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment flew 1600 miles in 39 C-47s, of which only ten aircraft dropped their pacs, the rest landed because of navigation difficulties and low fuel.

    Ten years ago, 3rd Battalion, 75th Rangers secured an airfield in Kandahar in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 19, 2001. On March 23rd, 2003, A Company, 3/75th conducted an airborne operation to secure an airfield in Northern Iraq a few days before the 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted into Northern Iraq when the Turks wouldn’t allow the 4th Infantry Division to off-load and invade Iraq from their borders.

    In years past, the 82d Airborne Division Association, mostly the DC Chapter, had to lobby to get recognition for National Airborne Day from the Senate every year, until 2009 when the Senate made it permanent.

    We used to get a Presidential Proclamation every year, but for some reason, we haven’t had any since 2008.

    That’s me, on my ass as usual, in the days before Eric Shinseki;

    Thanks to Mr. Shackleford (I don’t think that’s his real name) for the link. And thanks to DrewM who pointed you Morons over here.

  • Illinois soldier unfit for football after basic training

    Parachutecutie sends us a link to an article from Yahoo sports about the state of Illinois who won’t grant a waiver for a student, Eddie Nuss, to play football after he missed some of the summer pre-season practices because he was in Fort Benning, GA in basic training;

    “There’s this overriding safety issue,” IHSA executive director Marty Hickman told the Record. “Our sports medicine committee continues to feel that being in shape and being in football shape are two different things. We’ve had this issue a number of times. It’s been brought to the board’s attention, and they’ve consistently said that they’re not interested in modifying this policy.

    Yeah, being in Army basic training shape and being in football shape are two different things. I played football in high school and didn’t know what “being in shape” was until my drill sergeants showed me what being in shape was. I think someone needs to send Marty Hickman to Fort Benning, GA in the summer and let him go through the first few weeks of basic training, so he can speak to the issue with some experience behind him.

  • The Rumor Doctor looks for “stress cards”

    Our buddy, Jeff Schogol, known as the “Rumor Doctor” at Stars & Stripes went looking for “stress cards’ in the halls of mythological beasts;

    More than a few of you have asked The Rumor Doctor to look into the longstanding rumor that the Army once issued “stress cards” for recruits who could not endure the rigors of basic training. Allegedly, these cards provide a reprieve to recruits too tired to exercise or stressed out from being yelled at by a drill sergeant.

    This rumor usually comes up when certain folks claim that basic training has become “soft” because today’s recruits are “weak.” Although the stress cards rumor has been disputed several times over the years, it lives on.

    I don’t know about stress cards, but I used to hand my troops “tough shit cards” when they complained. It had little boxes they could get hole-punched by the chaplain. I don’t think any actually went to the chaplain to get their tough shit cards punched, and it probably didn’t do anything for their morale, but it made me feel better, and that’s all that’s really important.

  • On the tarmac at Dover

    SSG Medzyk sends a link to an article from SanLuisObispo.com about how, even though 19 of the 30 families of the fallen from that helicopter crash last week denied their permission for the media to create an event out of the return of the earthly remains to Dover Air Force Base, the White House photographer was still on the scene, snapping photos. The above photo was the White House “Photo of the Day” Tuesday.

    Doug Wilson, head of public affairs at the Pentagon, said the department did not know the White House photographer was present and had no idea a photo of the event was being released until it became public. He said the photographers who routinely travel with the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not allowed to go to the event, and no official Pentagon photos were taken or released.

    So the White House doesn’t follow it’s own rules and doesn’t see a need to comply with the wishes of the family…especially when a great photo opportunity presents itself. When was the last time that the President went to Dover, anyway? I think it was when they first allowed photographers to snap pictures of the returning victims of war, wasn’t it?

    I see the President still doesn’t know how to salute properly, either.